17.10.2003

Epilogue to International Summer School "Communication in Action"

On July 22-25, 2003 in Rostov-On-Don and the town of Tanais, there was an International Summer School "Communication in Action." The summer school was organized and sponsored by the Russian Communication Association (RCA), Regional Branch "Metacommunication" (Rostov-on-Don), Institute of Management, Business, and Law, Research Laboratory of Applied Communication (Rostov-on-Don), and Regional Association of American Exchange Programs Alumni program: "Arrow of Progress" (Rostov Region).

The Summer School was based at the Institute of Management, Business, and Law, Don Public Library, and in the town of Tanais (Archaeological Museum). Over 50 people took part in the conference; the range of participants included professors, students and American exchange program alumni from Rostov-on-Don, Moscow, Tambov, Almaty (Kazakhstan), and the USA.

Impressions of participants about the Summer School in Rostov:

Sergey Zolotukhin, Kazakh Economics University, Almaty, Kazakhstan:

Traditionally, any person, especially a professor working in higher education, is very conservative when it concerns something new and different. He or she would rather hold on to his or her own traditional perspective.

I am not an exception. Nevertheless, for me personally, all the proceedings of the International Summer School in Rostov turned out to be to be very useful. In terms of understanding the basics of communication theory and practice, we still realize that we are just beginning. Almost all the lectures were a success. I want to point out the training in historical Tanais as the most positive experience of the Summer School. Clearly the psychologists who picked the training site, knew what they were doing. There was an atmosphere favorable for communication and a motivation to communicate through role play and dramatization. The Rostov branch of the Russian Communication Association decided to meet twice a year. Those of us who live further away can stay envious.

Margarita Zolotukhina, Tambov State University

RCA Summer School was held for only the first time, and yet - it still fulfilled the expectations of the participants both in terms of professional and interpersonal communication. The chance to get exposure to the materials of reports and master classes allowed me to identify various areas of interest as well as specialists whom I would like to know better. As a professor of English I got an opportunity to receive quite valuable information for shaping the further directions of my scholarly and practical activities. The most promising direction seems to be joint communication courses as demonstrated by some international projects of Rostov Institute of Management, Business, and Law and a number of US universities. The most interesting for me were the ideas of developing communication courses in English and also organizing correspondence among American and Russian students, and in addition - carrying out joint research on communication involving these students.

The video materials and comments of the speaker (N.V. Katantseva) allowed one to get acquainted with the process of organizing seminars on studying organizational communication within the framework of a Russian-American project.

The idea of teaching a foreign language in situations of professional communication was discussed in the report of O.P. Kryukova. She stressed upon the role of foreign language in widening the horizons of professional communication. The Summer School participants were shown a computer demonstration on how to create a business letter in English. I think that another excellent idea is letting students do their graduate diploma research in English, which would allow them to get another specialization and get certified in professional translation.

In a number of speeches (I.N. Rozina, V.A. Puzyrev, V.B. Vishnevetsky, V.V. Gorbov) one could see the problems of computer-mediated communication and the role of English as a language of international communication in the Internet. The participants were introduced to the content of the courses "Internet Access and Training" and "Methods of Broadcast Audio/Text."

There were a lot of interesting facts on non-verbal communication between people living in NIS and USA in the lively speech of S.A. Zolotukhin. His speech contained some practical recommendations for young scholars about how to adapt to everyday life, research work, and participation in conferences in the USA.

A trip to Tanais, with psychological training close to the excavations of an ancient Greek town, and a barbecue gave all the participants a great opportunity to experience communication in action!

The photoreporting (in Russian site)